Sen. Ben Sasse

Biography

Ben Sasse is a fifth-generation Nebraskan with the honor of representing the Cornhusker state in the U.S. Senate. Having never run for anything before, he and his family campaigned tirelessly in a rickety old campaign bus in 2013 and 2014, ultimately winning all of Nebraska's 93 counties in one of the biggest landslides in state history.

Like many Nebraskans, Ben learned about hard work in corn and bean fields at an early age. The son of a coach and a graduate of Fremont High, he was recruited to wrestle at Harvard and subsequently earned a PhD in American history at Yale. An occasional professor, Ben has spent most of his worklife helping companies and institutions through technological and leadership disruptions. He’s worked with the Boston Consulting Group and McKinsey and Company, as well as private equity firms and not-for-profit organizations, to tackle failing strategies across dozens of sectors and nations.

Before being elected to the Senate, Ben spent five years as a college president. When he was recruited to lead Midland University, Ben was just 37, making him one of the youngest college presidents in the nation. The 130-year-old Lutheran college in Ben’s hometown was on the verge of bankruptcy when he arrived, but became one of the nation's fastest-growing schools just three years later.

A member of the intelligence, judiciary, and banking committees, Ben is focused on the future of work, the future of war, and the First Amendment. He worries that the Senate lacks urgency about cyber and about the nation’s generational debt crisis. An opponent of perpetual incumbency, he has no intention of spending his life in the Senate.

Ben has written two books – one about the evaporating distinction between adolescence and perpetual adolescence in economies with limited work for teenagers, and the other about the paradox of loneliness and collapsing local community precisely as the digital revolution makes middle-class Americans the richest people in human history. Both books quickly became national best-sellers.

Ben and his wife, Melissa, have three kids – Corrie, Alex, and Breck, any one of whom can often be spotted accompanying their dad on their weekly commute from Nebraska to Capitol Hill. In their spare time, the Sasse kids seek to break their parents via more unauthorized pet adoptions.